Additionally, incentives exist for him to report things he himself did while at Twitter, for example: https://twitter.com/igb/status/1562072030010191880

> [Mudge and Sethi] deprioritized Twitter's kernel & OS upgrade and encryption at rest initiatives.

(from Ian Brown, who deserves his good reputation as much as anyone I've met)

there's rewards for whistleblowers because often doing so will destroy your career and result in massive legal bills from much more powerful entities suing you.

Mudge was already an officer of the company, he had much more guaranteed money to gain from just shutting up and staying there.

That's a very short-sighted view of a career. In the short term, it is bad for your career, but being a whistleblower who is right can raise your profile significantly and make you much wealthier than if you stay at a company quietly (even if your salary is $X million). In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped.

Think about some of the past whistleblowers from these companies: Frances Haugen, Timnit Gebru, etc. These are all people for whom whistleblowing was a good career move.

> In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped.

Probably also doesn't hurt that he gets to twist the knife into the company that ousted his friend Jack.

> If a whistleblower makes disclosures to the SEC that result in a judgement if the SEC successfully sues the subject of that disclosure. This can be worth tens of millions of dollars.

I'm not sure what your point here is. That the lawsuit can be worth a lot of money doesn't take away from the fact that the SEC has to prove their case in court. How does the value of the settlement raise any question about the legitimacy of the judgement?

People who lose internal political battles at companies have strong incentives to leave and then become whistleblowers. It's not that the disclosures are automatically false, but they are definitely coming from someone with an axe to grind and a strong monetary incentive to find anything possible to complain about.

Yes, but so what? If the disclosures are false, the "whistleblower" gets no reward. If they are true, who cares what the motive of the whistleblower was?

"So what" is that if the disclosures are false, there is no cost other than potential reputation damage if the thing you blow the whistle about is unpopular. For this particular whistleblower on this particular issue (a highly respected and politically well-connected person talking about security and privacy), there is pretty much no chance that it costs him anything.

That means that being a whistleblower is strictly positive expected value in this case, which means that there is a heavy incentive to find something to blow the whistle about, no matter how flimsy. Additionally, the whistleblower has a strong incentive to add color about how bad these problems are.

People treat whistleblowers as unbiased sources of reliable information, but that could not be further from the truth. If you ask a tobacco salesman if their product has health consequences, they are going to say "no" (unless there is incontrovertible evidence of health consequences) the same way a whistleblower is going to say "this is super bad" about something that happens at a company (unless there is incontrovertible evidence that it was not bad). Understanding the bias of a source is very important.

True. I was replying to something much more narrow:

> This can be worth tens of millions of dollars.

I don't understand why the potential value of the settlement casts any shade on the whistleblower.

I was not commenting on fake whistleblowers doing it in an attempt to trash a company's reputation.

Because it's a nearly risk-free way for someone to get very rich. If you could say "my old boss, who I didn't like, was bad at his job" and have a chance to get rich doing it, you would. You would do it if you thought you might be able to make an argument that your boss did a bad job. The chance to get rich induces bias.

Also consider this: whenever someone complains about something you're hearing one side. The complaints might be valid. The information could be real but incomplete. Perhaps there are things that person didn't know. Perhaps there are things that they chose not to disclose because it doesn't pain them in a good light or it simply contradicts the narrative they're presenting.

With the Elon lawsuit with Twitter, it presents an opportunity for people to raise their public profile. (Many) Elon stans will be inclined to believe it no matter what. You will have stories written about you. You may well get interviewed or even called as a witness.

So Mudge here has a financial incentive and may want to raise his public profile. This is selective release of information to serve both of those ends. Again, it could still all be true. But always consider the source and what they ahve to gain.

This is just basic media literacy, really.

So me pointing out how Mudge might (and I really do mean "might"; I'm not saying he is biased) be biased should prompt you to see if there any flaws in his claims. If someone is disagreeing with his assertions, look at what they're saying, what their motivations are and if there are any obvious flaws.

I find this a good rule to live by: if someone says someone that agrees with your preconceived notions, whatever those might be, be doubly skeptical.

Yes, but this is all orthogonal to my question.

Your argument could be better, depending how significant the alleged issue was, the whistleblower will be blacklisted from all but menial work.

>That acquisition agreement calls for "specific performance", which means Elon pretty much agreed to buy the company no matter what (he waived due diligence).

>So it's at least worth noting that this disclosure happens right at a time when it might help Elon.

I am having one hell of a time putting these two together.